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Space simulator Star Citizen has outpaced previous video game crowd-funding record holder Project Eternity, raising $6.2 million, and shows the world how to do a Kickstarter project the right way.

Open-space, semi-MMO sci-fi adventure and space simulator game Star Citizen has raised a combined total of $6.2 million in crowd-funding through both its own website and Kickstarter.

This is an impressive sum, though not necessarily a surprising one. The game looks terrific and the depth present in the game looks truly ground-breaking, as do the graphics.

Star Citizen places you in a massive and ever-expanding (vis-a-vis micro-updates) universe with some elements of the MMO genre and some elements of single-player all on one super-server a la Eve Online.

Creator Chris Roberts of Wing Commander fame, describes his multiplayer goal as a merger between the best aspects of MMOs and single-player experiences.

“I wanted to combine things I like about the promise of a MMO, but avoid the aspects that I’m not so keen on like splintered player groups, griefing and grinding,” he writes. “I also was really impressed with how Demon’s Souls merged the single player experience with the multiplayer side.”

So, of course, this sounds fascinating, because I keep saying that the true promise of the MMO has not been fully realized, that most MMOs are too busy, too social, too boring. Real innovation in the multiplayer space has taken place with games like Eve Online, Demon’s and Dark Souls, Dragon’s Dogma and the just-launched ZombiU, but the real promise of a fully alive massively multiplayer (or massively single-player) experience has not been realized.

Star Citizen may change that—or it may not. I suppose we can’t know for sure. What we do know, however, is quite a great deal thanks to the stellar crowd-funding drive both at Kickstarter and the game’s home-page.

The multiplayer portions of the game utilize instanced battles and areas that determine whether friends of persons-of-interest are nearby to populate the game with other player characters.

Since everyone is on the same server and since the game is so huge and demanding that no PC could render everyone at the same time, this system ensures that everyone can play together but also apart.

As you progress, depending on both your chosen PvP settings and your fame and other factors, the frequency of PvE and PvP events may change.

Roberts explains:

So if you’ve set your game settings to be low PvP and you’re in a relatively safe area, you’ll likely have an NPC (PvE) encounter as opposed to a PvP one. Of course your ranking and any reputation you earn won’t be the same with a PvE encounter versus a PvP. My hope for this dynamic is that it will allow people to first play Star Citizen in a safer more single player open world style, but as they grow in confidence and want to test their mettle against other real players they can take the training wheels off and get into battles with real players. There will also be areas of the universe that no matter what your PvP setting is, will be PvP. These will be systems that are on the fringes of the policed galaxy and will be notorious for pirate and other illegal activity. They will also be the most lucrative areas – if you can survive.

Even in the single-player campaign portion of the game, co-op will be an option.

Roberts says that this portion of the game will be “pretty similar to the Demon’s Souls setup where people could drop in as a Blue Phantom to help you kill a boss monster or fight off another invading player, or you could drop in as a Black Phantom to someone else’s world and try and kill them for XP and other gamerewards.”

Beyond the unique multiplayer, the dozens of star systems, and the single-player Squadron 42 campaign, the game is going to be perhaps the most incredible graphical achievement so far on the PC.

Models are said to contain 10 times the polygon count seen in most AAA games at the moment. And certainly the game footage looks stunning, with spaceships and space scenes that are truly breathtaking in both scope and fidelity.

One way or another, the fact that this game sounds really, really cool and is an obviously ambitious and exciting idea is not in and of itself enough to have made this crowd-funding drive a success.

The combination of development experience creator Chris Roberts has under his belt and the excellent quality of information for backers, the wealth of in-game footage and screenshots of the game in progress stand in stark contrast to many Kickstarter projects and serves as a perfect illustration of how to crowd-fund the right way.

After all, the game just raised over six million dollars. It must be doing something right.

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I was definitely interested in this a lot, but ultimately decided not pledge because of the blatant Pay2Win system that wasn’t properly detailed. Despite them stating that it is “not Pay2Win”, among the Info on their page it was detailed that you can buy “Galactic Credits” for real money and he then later stated separately that you can buy ships for Galactic Credits, and even a hypothetic exchange rate of 1000 Credits = $1: http://www.abload.de/img/hmmm00sid.png making certain ships cost $150-250+

I’d rather wait for the end result and have no surprises if I decide I’m interested than put up my money upfront for something that doesn’t even exist yet but have no interest in later because the “Free2Play” model turns out worse than that for Star Wars: The Old Republic.

For that and other reasons I found this Crowdfunding campaign to be especially problematic, most of the others were fully funded by fans and you’d know that you’d get the finished game in whatever state or quality it might end up to be. There have been a number of unanswered questions regarding the Payment Model for the final release and even these “mysterious investors” and their influence and stake over the game.

It isn’t Pay2Win. Pay2Win is giving better perks/weapons/etc. to people who pay money. The idea of Pay2Win is that unless you pay money, you can’t compete at the same level as those who do. You effectively have a watered down experience unless you are willing to pay for it.

This is a situation where you have the option to pay money in order to save the time it would take to get something. For example, you spend $100 instead of doing something that takes 5 hours.

However, this is balanced out. If you don’t pay, you can not only still reach that same level but you are likely to do so with more skill than someone who paid for it. The time invested means you have a richer experience than someone who paid to get there.

Second, I don’t think you are in a position to critique this so harshly. Over 90,000 people have backed this to the tune of nearly $6.3 million dollars. In other words, it is a HUGE success, and I would say they have more than demonstrated that they know what they are doing.

How is it not, if there are ships priced at what is ~$150-250+ there would obviously have to be an in-game alternative to getting them worth that effort, which unfortunately usually boils down to weeks, if not months of grind (which can in turn be skipped by simply buying something with real money) = P2W? Presumably if there’s an actual way to trade real currency for InGame currency you could buy everything else too, but nobody knows the finer details (likely not even the developers themselves in a finalized state at this point).

What I found problematic about this proposition is exactly that noone would know what will come out at the end. In all the other cases it’s usually just the finished game in whatever state it is (may it be good or bad) and any additional physical goodies. In this case I doubt that everything has been pre-planned and pre-revealed the way it’ll come out (or for that matter that he can keep all his promises) and the campaign pretty much banked on selling “virtual goods” of one kind or another. Even the decision on which part (Squadron 42/Star Citizen) to concentrate the most was posed as a $5 increase in pledge instead of a normal Poll and there was encouragement to do it multiple times: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cig/star-citizen/posts/344359 There was apparently only the one running prototype involving a big carrier running for now and A LOT of things can change till release, especially if you consider outside investors that put 2-3x the money of the crowdfunding effort into the project having their say and wanting a return on their investment.

If it’d be done with a full set of features displayed like this: http://www.swtor.com/free/features everyone could decide for themselves, at this point it’s largely speculation how it’ll turn out though since nobody has played the game and even the design isn’t finalized. I didn’t want to put any of my money into what might turn out to be a very exploitative system.

As for the people that backed this, I saw some that to the very end didn’t exactly know what they had pledged for asking if it’ll be a “Single Player game or an MMO” and similar questions. I highly doubt that everyone has gotten the finer details of even what was revealed so far. The first few days when he released videos of the Tech Demo and the GDC Panel I was almost ready to pledge too, but decided to wait for some more Info after his site crashed.

The $250 price tag on that particular ship can’t be quantified yet. I wasn’t able to find any credible information on the “death penalty” other than a vague mention of lifetime insurance for pledge ships. I saw something stream past in their chat that mentioned loosing mods when you lose a ship but insurance saves the ship? How much is insurance normally? Pledge ships also get berthing fees on that ship free for life. What are those fees normally? How many credits can you make per hour after the first month of learning the ropes?

You also get assorted swag with the $250. It is as low as $30 for a digital copy of the game plus the usual “collector’s” edition swag which are a $20-40 markup. Judging from this article it sounds like a “care bear” Eve. If PvP is toggle-able then you only risk what you choose to and your prize ship might be relatively safe.

You also have to put a price on saying to the gaming world. “Yes I play a space sim. Yes it is a PC game. No you aren’t getting a console port.” Then you get alpha/beta access as a bonus. $250 ship? Try $150 if you only value the charity of the crowd funding idea at a mere $40. I personally might say $100 ship and thanks for the swag.

The power of each ship vastly comes from the upgrades you put into it, these upgrades are under a separate insurance. A decently upgraded Aurora (the baseline starter ship) will have an easy time of killing a non-upgraded Constellation (the $250 ship) Both on the same upgrades with only 1 pilot in each, it’ll be a tossup with the win likely going to the better player. The connie has more guns and armor, but it is a freighter not a fighter. The devs actually said that at the start someone with a Constellation will be at a disadvantage actually because of how much more money it takes to upgrade it.

Instead of leveling in this game, you upgrade your ship parts. Each ship also isn’t better than others, they just fulfil a different purpose. For instance the 300i lacks missiles but has double the cargo space of the Hornet.

It’s not pay to win because your definition isn’t correct. Carl was correct. P2W is where you must pay real money to have the best items because they cannot be attained in game. All of the pledge ships are available to attain in game with credits.

I do not think it is as pay to win as much as you might think. The ships all have their individual pros and cons and are all suited to different tasks, based on the stats I have seen on the site. So far there is just the detailed brochure pdf for the Constellation, which is a powerful ship, but only if you have friends to help you defend it. It will be a big target, as will the 100 Idris Corvettes that got sold as addons for $1,000 a piece on the last day of the campaign.

If the Wing Commander series is any indication of how powerful the anti-capital ship torpedoes the bomber class ships (the Gladiator and the Retaliator) can carry could be, a single torpedo could take out capital ships up to destroyer size, maybe three or four for a carrier. Too slow for anything smaller than corvettes, relatively easy to shoot down meaning you will need to be that much closer to the target, really long lock time, and will probably be very expensive munitions in in-game credits. They would not be used lightly.

Merely having a larger ship will not mean less work surviving in the game, the threats will just be different. Repelling boarders is not going to be an issue for single person fighter sized ships.

The poll for supporting either Squadron 42 or Star Citizen with the $5 addons was not really a poll. What you buy with that is a skin for your ship that shows your support in-game, you can buy both and switch between them (and all of the other available skins) with the electroskin hull enhancement. You can only buy them once as far as I know, but they apply to all of your ships.

What people pledged for was the dream and the promise, not what has been made so far, which is a very pre-alpha prototype. There is barely even concept art of most of the ships at this point. But, there is so much player input in the process at this point that I feel confident that the promises will HAVE to be kept. There was recently a player poll to choose which concept art picture to use as a basis for the Freelancer class ship design. I find that very encouraging, and I am looking forward to seeing what my 300i is going to look like, and maybe vote on given the chance.

Can’t say I am surprised about their success, project eternity and others could learn a thing or two about fundraising drives from Roberts. Solid tech demo, daily updates, and alpha access at a low buy in price. I look forward to seeing how this one develops.

I know I’m in the minoirty, but I enjoyed the TOR as it was a science fiction MMO. I’m tired of the fantasy genre with orcs and swords. I haven’t tried EvE, but the “gameplay” seem too boring for me. This game looks promising, and I would like to see more space and science fiction MMOs.